LCG and ARC middleware interoperability

Abstract

LCG and ARC are two of the major production-ready Grid middleware solutions being
used by hundreds of HEP researchers every day. Even though the middlewares are based
on same technology, there are substantial architectural and implementational
divergencies. An ordinary user faces difficulties trying to cross the boundaries of
the two systems: ARC clients so far have not been capable accessing LCG resources and
vice versa. After presenting the similarities and differences of the LCG and ARC
middlewares, we will focus on the strategies implementing interoperable layers over
the two middlewares. The most important areas are the job submission and management
and information system components. The basic requirement for the interoperability
layer implementation is capability of transparent cross Grid job submission both from
ARC and LCG.